Drinking at a Crossroads: Neighborhood Bar Tour 2005-2006
About this series: As you may have read recently, the city of Portland is at a “crossroads.” One path leads to a “yuppie playground,” where everyone lives in a condo and considers kayaking a fun leisure activity. Down the other lies the Socialist Revolution liberal newspaper editors secretly hope for. I mean dread. We dread that.
Anyway, in at least one respect, Portland is at an important intersection. City officials will soon consider zoning changes aimed at keeping bars out of residential areas. The direction the city takes from here will have a profound effect on our cultural and social lives for years to come.
Are neighborhood bars a scourge that must be stamped out before good citizens who drink in the privacy of their own homes see their property values slip from quintuple to merely quadruple what they originally paid? Or are local pubs the key links that keep our community together and make the six months of frigid dusk at this latitude tolerable?
The Bollard is launching a special investigative series called Drinking at a Crossroads: Neighborhood Bar Tour 2005-2006. Our staff will travel — on foot or by designated driver — to neighborhood bars throughout the area and conduct in-depth research to help us answer these important questions, or at least better understand whatever the hell the regulars at these places are mumbling to themselves all day.
Awful Annie’s Irish Saloon
189 Congress St., Portland
773-9230
Annie’s: Not as awful as you think
There are plenty of good reasons not to go to Awful Annie’s Irish Saloon, the small neighborhood bar on Congress Street halfway up Munjoy Hill.
For example, if you’re single and hoping to meet a new fling, this ain’t the place. The pool of young, attractive and available humans is shallow, to put it kindly. Couples in search of a spot for dinner and drinks can forget Annie’s, unless you plan to order the Fritos with a side of salted peanuts.
Bar gamers will be similarly disappointed to find a wood-paneled, dim-screened video poker machine that probably doesn’t pay out anymore, and a dingy, unheated “game room” where you half expect to find Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs playing bumper pool – “It puts the marked ball in the pocket.”
White-collar workers looking for a place to unwind after five will feel more comfortable elsewhere. This is a blue-collar bar where, for example, farting is considered funny — it’s also the only form of live music.
So, leaving aside most single people, most married people, and an ever-increasing portion of hip, upwardly mobile Munjoy Hill people, who’s left?
Simply put, people for whom drinking beer and hard liquor is considered an end in itself, rather than a lubricant for other activities, like flirting, dancing and collecting office gossip. To the extent other activities are pursued at Annie’s, these mainly consist of having a laugh with the bartender, watching TV or listening to the jukebox. Annie’s regulars may not be the most functional members of society, but they sure as hell know how to kick back and have a good time — and in my book, that’s trump.
My buddy Johnny and I stopped in the other night around seven for a couple brews. It was just like old times.
Back when we both lived in the neighborhood (I’ve since moved to the West End), this bar was George’s Tavern. Annie spruced the place up a little bit and added some Irish bric-a-brac, but not much else has changed. Most comforting, she kept the old bar with its photos of family, friends and pets from George’s era varnished into the top. The ten squeaky bar stools bolted to the floor have also survived the change of ownership.
In the old days – like the 1990s — George himself could usually be found at the near end of the bar, watching Wheel of Fortune. When we walked in the other night, Annie was at the far end of the bar in her trademark wide-brimmed hat, playing cards with a couple regulars. The young woman tending bar, we learned, is related to one of the bartenders from George’s day, and George himself is her father’s Godfather.
This was also comforting, because for all their rough edges and brash talk, the regulars and bartenders at George’s were fundamentally “good people” – caring, generous folks. You just had to get past first impressions and preconceptions to realize this. In 1999, I walked into George’s for the first time half-expecting an ass-kicking. Instead, the bartender, Del, gave me a serving of curried lobster from a big bowl someone had brought in earlier that day, and the regulars bought me beers.
Sadly, it seems most of the old crew has since dispersed to either the grave, “the bunker” (the VFW post up the Hill) or an illegal gambling and drinking operation I’ve heard tell of in the neighborhood. Thankfully, the friendly, live-and-let-drink atmosphere remains.
Johnny and I fed the jukebox a few bucks and got more than our money’s worth. This wasn’t one of those new, bait-and-switch TouchTunes digital jukeboxes decried in the previous neighborhood bar review. This was a classic 100-CD model, stocked mostly with bar rock and bad country – enough of the former to keep us content, though we played “The Gambler” for laughs.
When a live AC-DC track came up, the bartender cranked the volume unbidden, like she’d read our minds. She gave us a bowl of pretzels. Johnny and I talked classic rock and felt right at home.
In fact, we had such a good time that we came back on Saturday, with a larger group, to watch the football game. As before, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Cheap beer (PBR pitchers for $4.50), free pretzels, accommodating service – what’s not to love?
Like Ruski’s, Annie’s is in the thick of its neighborhood (there are apartments above this bar, too), and under the jurisdiction of a city councilor (Will Gorham) with almost zero-tolerance for bars in residential areas. When Annie applied for a permit allowing outdoor service a year or so ago, the idea was shot down by city officials before the ink was dry. Don’t be surprised if the city takes aim at indoor service next. Do be prepared to defend the Hill’s last and oldest neighborhood bar.
— Chris Busby
Awful Annie’s Irish Saloon is open Tues.-Fri. and Sun. 4 p.m.-1 a.m., Sat. 1 p.m.-1 a.m., Mon. 6 p.m.-1 a.m.
